One of the objections I hear constantly to traditional buildings is that they’re too expensive compared to the glass-and-steel variety. “Do you realize how much it costs for all that custom masonry and sculpture?” they say. So, let’s play a game of Guess The Cost. Below are three buildings: Gehry’s Louis Vuitton in Paris (opened 2014), David Schwarz’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville (opened 2006, seats 1,844), and Cesar Pelli’s Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, CA (opened 2008, seats 2,000). Match each to the following construction costs: $120 million, $143 million, and $240 million.

Congrats if you guessed the Gehry at $143m, the Schermerhorn at $120m, and the Pelli at $240m. Yup, the wavy glass one on the right cost double the neoclassical one in the middle. Of the Gehry LV, Wikipedia says the sails are “made of 3,584 laminated glass panels, each unique and specifically curved to fit the shapes drawn by the architect.” Custom glass don’t come cheap, folks.

If we’re so much wealthier than the people of the past, and the weenie economists (AKA Tyler Cowen) are always reminding us, how come every shit town in America before 1920 had a courthouse that people still find amazing? It’s a lie.

As much as we want to blame Architects for this shit it needs to be remembered that they aren’t the one’s who control the purse strings. Everyone of those modernist buildings was either approved by a CEO or some committee of eminents. The fact is that our ruling class are a bunch of aesthetic savages.

“Yup, the wavy glass one on the right cost double the neoclassical one in the middle.”

And yet, I’d be willing to pay double in order to get what actually turns out to be the less costly version. Why do they keep building this wiggily-ass crap? The very first wiggily-ass building (probably built in 1975 or so), doubtless seemed kinda cool, or at least novel. But the idea that we’re STILL building these over-priced, little kid’s idea of what a “neat” building would look like, is just plain ludicrous.